Publications

The European Union (EU) is engaged in a complex digital and ecological transition. The policy programmes launched by the EU to support recovery, resiliency and new modes of growth are definitively future-oriented. Foresight is therefore particularly appropriate for the current season of EU policies. The European Commission adopted the first-ever Strategic Foresight Report in September 2020 to set out the rationale of foresight and chart priorities for the development of EU policies. In the EU legislative cycle, new policy initiatives are supported by impact assessment. To state that foresight and impact assessment are not foes, but friends is uncontroversial, but less obvious is how to pin down how exactly they can be friends. We explain how foresight can add to impact assessment, and outline some issues that will have to be addressed in the near future.

Better regulation is an agenda aiming at managing legislation across the different stages of the policy cycle. At the EU level, this agenda for reform has been handled as soft law with communications, reports, principles, and toolboxes. The ambiguity of the concept has created a policy arena where the EU institutions jockey for positions on the control of the lawmaking process. We then turn to the Member States. For their better regulation policies, they have chosen a combination of soft and hard instruments and different degrees of formalization. Tellingly, this variation shows the different views and assumptions on the efficiency of soft law as well as of the role played by legal and administrative traditions.

At the moment of writing, we are waiting for the publication of the new Communication of the European Commission on better regulation, originally announced for Spring 2020 and then delayed to Autumn 2020, re-scheduled for February 2021 and now announced for the end of April 2021. To understand the Communication, however, we need a map to navigate the better regulation strategy of the European Commission, and situate events like the publication of a Communication in the broader political context of the European Union (EU). To provide such a map is the aim in this paper. Indeed, this is a good time to look at what has been achieved in the domain of better regulation, and what has changed along the way both in the political context, and in the social climate. Policy paradigms in economic, innovation and sustainability policy have also moved fast. It is always useful to rewind the clock and listen to what the recent political history has to tell us. Hence let us start with the question what was the state of play with better regulation when the new Commission chaired by Ursula von der Leyen started its operations? Was EU-style better regulation in need of major repair, or was it grosso modo doing well?

This comparative Handbook provides a pioneering and comprehensive account of regulatory impact assessment – the main instrument used by governments and regulators to appraise the likely effects of their policy proposals. Renowned international scholars and practitioners describe the substance of impact assessment, situating it in its proper theoretical traditions and scrutinizing its usage across countries, policy sectors, and policy instruments. The Handbook of Regulatory Impact Assessment will undoubtedly be of great value to practitioners and also scholars with its wealth of detail and lessons to be learned.

European governments have adopted policy instruments for regulatory appraisal, oversight, ex‐post evaluation, and simplification in the context of the so‐called ‘smart regulation agenda’. In this article we compare the two most important instruments, that is, regulatory impact assessment (RIA) and the standard cost model (SCM). We answer the following questions: What are the economic rationales that, at least in principle, should make the SCM and RIA work? What are the learning models that, yet again in principle, allow the two instruments to produce effects? The RIA economic rationale is grounded in welfare economics. The SCM economics is rudimentary: one can hardly make an economic case for the SCM. With regard to learning models, RIA draws on rational‐synoptic models, whilst the SCM is inspired by experience‐based learning. We then discuss economic rationales and learning models jointly, thus explaining the different implementation patterns of the two instruments and exposing the ambiguities in the relationship among instruments, ideas, and behavioural change.

Can the European regulatory state be managed? The European Union (EU) and its Member States have looked at Better Regulation as a possible answer to this difficult question. This emerging public policy presents conceptual challenges to scholars of public management and administrative reforms, but also opportunities. In this conceptual article, we start from the problems created by the value-laden discourse used by policy- makers in this area, and provide a definition and a framework that are suitable for empirical/explanatory research. We then show how public administration scholars could usefully bring Better Regulation into their research agendas. To be more specific, we situate Better Regulation in the context of the academic debates on the New Public Management, the political control of bureaucracies, evidence-based policy, and the regulatory state in Europe

Regulatory reforms in Europe have focused on 'good regulation', 'better law-making', and most recently 'regulatory quality'. This article deals with the main instrument used by governments to achieve
regulatory quality in the law-making process, that is, regulatory impact assessment (RIA). The article argues that quality means different things to different stakeholders. Thus the approach to quality cannot be monolithic. Different stakeholders bring different logics in the RIA policy process. Logics are shaped by context. Yet the notions of quality that circulate in policy-makers’ circles are essentially
insensitive to context. The result is that policy-makers who have tried to import RIA in European contexts (especially continental contexts) have found it difficult to scratch below the surface of new
public management rhetoric and implement successful programmes. The argument here is not the trivial one that ‘context matters’ in the diffusion of RIA, but that we need to understand how it matters
in terms of dimensions and mechanisms. Hence the article breaks down ‘context’ into four dimensions, that is, institutions, territory, theories of the policy process, and legitimacy. The conclusions balance efficiency and legitimacy, and formulate policy recommendations.

Do systematic approaches to economic policy appraisal, specifically regulatory impact assessment (RIA), enable complex organizations to learn? This question invites a reconsideration of how we conceptualize learning in public policy. Consequently, this paper distinguishes between economic-Bayesian learning, social learning, and political learning. These three types of learning are examined alongside the null hypothesis of change brought about by factors different from learning – such as partisan politics, regulatory competition, and coercion. Evidence from four countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK) is examined within a time-period of ten years or so, controlling for both domestic and multi-level (that is, domestic-EU) effects. The findings corroborate social learning rather than economic-Bayesian learning. In turn, social learning does not provide a convincing explanation, unless one enters political learning. There is only random and scattered evidence for the null
hypothesis, but this is contingent on a sample of highly developed countries, in which coercion from international organizations and donor requirements do not play a significant role.

The better regulation agenda of the EU and the Member States has converged around plans for the reduction of administrative burdens. This is often presented as a pragmatic and efficient way to improve on the regulatory environment in Europe. However, there may be more symbolic politics than real efficiency gains in these plans, unless some conditions are met. This explains why business has not yet embraced wholeheartedly the ‘war on red tape’ agenda. The conclusion is that the agenda should be re-set in terms of regulatory quality, rather than focusing on ‘quantity targets’ in narrow areas of regulation.